Yellowstone Road Trip

In 2013, English photographer Peter Thody and his wife Carole spent nine days searching for wolves in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley. This is Peter's vivid, poignant, and often hilarious memoir of a road trip that
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If you’d asked the 10-year old me for the top three on my ‘things to do before I die’ list (OK, just ‘things to do’ – the notion of ever dying is so remote to a 10 year that it doesn’t enter the equation), I’d probably have gone for playing for Leeds United, getting Jacques Cousteau’s autograph, and seeing a wolf in the wild.
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While this is a 10-day vacation, days 1 and 10 are essentially write offs, time spent in Departures, cramped airline seats and ‘line limbo’. So today is Day 1 proper and there are few things more exhilarating than waking up in a new city where the only demand on your time is to explore a little.

Our hotel, the hundred-year old Peery (highly recommended) is right in the heart of the city and with the sun warming the sidewalks we make our way
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There’s a wonderful simplicity about the Grand Tetons. Drive into the park and there they are: the meanest-looking monuments to tectonic activity in the West, a jagged, saw-toothed range that rises to snow-capped summits straight out of a child’s drawing. They are the perfect mountains, visual shorthand for the entire Rocky Mountain range.

Wherever you go, they’re there, rising and falling sharply like a line graph charting The Nightmare on Wall Street. The viewpoint may change,
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From the moment I throw open the curtains, it’s clear that today’s going to be very different. There’s been snow overnight, the peaks are lost behind low clouds and it’s noticeably colder, so cold in fact that there’s rough, pitted ice beneath the two or three inches of white stuff that’s settled on the car.

As we hit the road, the wind begins to pick up, drifting the snow to and fro across the road like marine flora wafting in the ebb and flow of the tide. It makes for a spectacular drive – particularly the side trip to look for
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The thin smattering of fresh snow doesn’t look too promising, but the woman on reception says she’ll check with the boss. “How many snowmobiles will you need?” she asks. “Just the one, a dual-seat please.” “And what type?” “Erm, I’m not really sure. It’s our first time. What would you recommend?”

There’s a perceptible shift in her demeanor. The alarm bells ringing in her head are almost audible as she puts down her pen and looks up to check whether I’m serious. “You know, I can
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The fact that we’ve spent the night in Livingston is down to our aborted snowmobile adventure; if we’d gone ahead as planned, we’d have woken up still in West Yellowstone. As it is, we’re just 24 miles north of tonight’s pre-booked destination, Chico Hot Springs, and – more importantly – just over 50 miles from Gardiner and Yellowstone’s North Entrance.

It’s a glorious day, cold, bright and virtually cloudless. There’s nothing we have to do other than arrive at a luxury spa resort in, what, seven or eight hours’ time. And we’re a short drive from one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. How often is life this good?
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Seven days into our trip and this is it: the focus of our entire journey. Mule deer and pronghorn are all well and good but today’s the day we’re going into Yellowstone to find wolves. Camera batteries have been charged, memory cards formatted and lenses polished in preparation, and it’s with a sense of genuine excitement and anticipation – like a ten year-old at Christmas – that I pull back the curtains in our simple room to let the light shine in and the day begin.
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We re-enter Lamar Valley in state of semi-euphoria, pulling out the binoculars at every turnout in the full expectation of seeing more action. However, with the exception of the occasional hardy bison grazing on the long dead winter grass, Yellowstone’s wildlife has quite sensibly decided to sit out today’s snow in whatever natural shelter can be found.

We take maybe an hour to cover the 25 miles to tonight’s planned destination, Cooke City (literally the end of the road: beyond Cooke City is the beautiful Beartooth Highway, closed until late Spring), immersing ourselves in Yellowstone’s
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Realising a childhood ambition in such dramatic fashion exceeds all expectations but at the same time raises the distinct possibility of the last two days of our whistle-stop trip disappearing into an anticlimactic slog back to Salt Lake. Fortunately, the mountain region rises to the occasion and continues to surprise and delight, often in entirely unexpected ways.

Our day begins, as every good day should, with a drive through Paradise Valley as we make our way north from Gardiner to Livingston.
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We awake to another beautiful day, a golden light rising up over the mountains to the east. Fifteen minutes later – the time it takes to pack and throw down the scalding awfulness that is hotel room coffee – and the previously expansive scene has been swallowed up in the white noise of a blizzard. And this pretty much sets the scene for the rest of the day.

From the moment we depart Idaho Falls, noses close to the windshield as we peer into the driving snow, to all but the final leg into Salt Lake,
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